I have been through two of six cycles of chemotherapy. So far I am tolerating it well and have minimal side effects. Honestly, aside from the hair loss I have fatigue and a tiny bit of peripheral neuropathy.

So how do we know it is working? I asked this question after the first round of chemotherapy. The answer was 1) you will feel better and 2) we will repeat the PET scan so we can measure the progress.

This means that the mass has lost 85% of its original size. And it is not as bright now as it was in the first PET scan (probably not the correct terminology).

WooHoo! Progress!

I am not done. I still have 4 cycles for chemotherapy to complete and as long as my white cell counts stay high enough they will increase the dosage of the chemotherapy each round. But now I know the treatment is both the right treatment and it is working!

The first chemo cycle was a completely new experience filled with many unknowns. The unknowns definitely added to my anxiety. This second cycle had far fewer unknowns and the anxiety levels have been significantly lower. In fact, it felt a lot more like settling into a routine.

There were a couple of changes.

I tolerated the Rituxan infusions so well, I graduated to the injection. Instead of an infusion that takes 3 hours, the injection takes 5 minutes and they watch you for 15 minutes afterwards. Yes, the injection is a slow injection and takes 5 full minutes to complete. And it is given in the stomach. I was apprehensive about this because it sounds terrible. It wasn’t bad. It didn’t hurt as much as I expected and it was really fast.

My doctor changed the chemo protocol slightly. Instead of each chemo bag running 24 hours with no breaks between, she ordered that each bag run 20 hours with a 2 hour break between. This had 2 noticeable impacts. First, I had a 2 hour window when I was completely disconnected from the IV. You guessed it…this is when I took my shower and I did get to take showers everyday. I know it is a little thing, but that helped immensely. I also used that time to do yoga. My room in the hospital is very large but mostly empty and there is plenty of floor space for a yoga mat. The nurses loved that I brought my yoga mat and did yoga in my room. The second impact is that my chemo treatment finishes faster and I get to go home sooner. Instead of going home at 8:00 at night I got to go home at noon. The protocol change did cause a bit of confusion for some of the nurses and the pharmacy, but everyone seemed to figure it out.

Another change was to one of my medications. I have been taking a very low dose of xarelto to prevent clots. The very large tumor in my chest should be coming apart and that by itself is a clot risk so a blood thinner helps prevent that. This time in the hospital my doctor changed the pill blood thinner to an injection (lovenox). This is where I should have learned…ask more questions up front. I made the assumption that an injection would go into the IV line (several other do). No. The first time the nurse asked me where I wanted it and told me the IV line was not an option. I could have it in the arm, stomach, or thigh. Not knowing better, I said arm. Big mistake. This is one that goes into fatty tissue and my arm does not have very much of that. OUCH! I learned. The remaining injections (I got one per day) were in the stomach where I have plenty of squishy. Those were not so bad.

And then there was the settling into the hospital routine.

Mornings start early anywhere between 4:00 and 5:00 am with the night nurses sneaking in to get vitals (yes, all my night nurses were very kind and tried not to wake me up), and draw blood for the days blood work. They can take blood through my PICC line so it is easy for me.

Sometimes I go back to sleep, sometimes I sit up and start my day – check email, study Spanish (I have been working on learning Spanish using DuoLingo), read, etc.

Breakfast arrives anywhere between 8:00 and 9:00 am. You start to learn the sound of the food carts in the hallways and know food is on the way. I am on a regular diet because other than the cancer I am healthy. This means I get coffee and bacon with my breakfast. Everything is better with bacon.

Breakfast is followed by the morning medications – a fistful of pills.

Shortly after breakfast is rounds. This is when the doctor on call visits all the patients, examines them, makes sure they are doing ok, and makes any adjustments to treatment that might be necessary. I call this the parade. It is never just the doctor. It is the doctor and a assortment of medical students, social workers, pharmacy residents, nurses. I get to ask questions too. I want to understand both my disease and my treatment so I ask questions. I am not sure the doctor was prepared for my kind of questions because I ask more informed and complicated questions that he seems used to. I do so without apology and I think he is getting used to it.

After rounds and breakfast I go for a walk around the floor. I am supposed to get some exercise. I am restricted to the hospital floor I am on. It is not very big. When I go for walks (me and my IV pole) it is really just circles. But the nurses are happy and they put it in my chart.

The rest of the morning I work. I log in, answer emails, attend meetings, do work that needs to be done. It is very cool that I can work from anywhere, including the hospital. Honestly, this has been a sanity saver.

Lunch arrives around noon. One of the best things about being on a regular diet is that I can eat anything. This means that friends can bring me food from the outside so I get yummy food and visits with my favorite people. This is the best.

Afternoons are much like mornings, work, meetings, and because I am actually sick and all the medications (including the chemo) take a toll, I sometimes nap.

Dinner arrives between 4:30 and 6:00 pm. While the food is not gourmet, it also isn’t bad. Again, because I get the regular diet my food has flavor.

About every 4 hours throughout the day and night nurses come to check my vitals and make sure I am still doing ok.

The evening is when I get to spend time with my favorite visitor – my husband. He comes to visit after work and stays for several hours. He pulls the comfy chair over next to my bed and we watch YouTube sailing videos and chat about work and life and events of the day. It is my favorite part of the day.

Once my husband goes home, I settle in for the night.

There are other parts of the routine that I really like. I get texts from my mom, my sister, and my daughter. I even get to FaceTime with my daughter and granddaughter which is always fun. These parts of the routine are scattered through the day and are nice diversions from the monotony.

I had two special treats during this hospital stay. The first was a visit from my team. They came to see me and bring me my Chinese New Year gift. For background, my team is part of a larger team located in both Florida and Singapore. The leadership team (which I am a part of) decided to give each member of the team a traditional Chinese New Year gift – a red packet or envelop with a small amount of cash and 2 oranges. It was a wonderful surprise and it made my day!

My second treat was a visit from good friends who brought me lunch (yes a burger from the outside!) and visited with me the entire afternoon. It was so nice to have a wide ranging conversation about anything and everything.

And that is life in the hospital. Currently I am not in any pain or discomfort. The chemo is not making me feel bad while I am receiving it. So really, days in the hospital are just long and boring so I do my best to fill them with activity to keep me from being too bored.

And now I am 1/3 of the way through the chemo treatments. Two down, four to go.

The last 60 or so days have been kind of crazy. It has me thinking about a lot of different things. I’m not going to apologize for my poor grammar or even spelling it is one of those in my face kind of stream of consciousness things. First let me level set you.

The last day of November my wife wakes up with chest pains. Heart rate is fast, breathing is shallow, so we drive to the hospital. Yay, it’s not a heart attack, boo it is cancer.

The following weeks involved near daily visits to the hospital for tests as the prognosis came more into view day to day. All of this culminated in our family trip in the works for the entire year not happening. Even worse Christmas got ruined by bookended medical tests involving time in the hospital the day before and the day after Christmas.
Christmas was a gloomy occasion and I dare say ruined in some ways. Fear does not make for a cocktail of cheer and joy. We had lots of fear to go around.

Add my sons blowing their first semester not realizing due dates mean due dates in college. General work stuff mixed with general life stuff starts to fall away as trivial. Yes my sons fixed their grades. Re-work sucks.

With the start of January chemotherapy and something called rutuxin therapy started. Mind blowing pain for my wife became more tolerable. Her heart rate slowed, the drugs masked the original chest pains. She says it only hurts a little bit then cries. She started talking to her family more and more and the general malaise would soon envelope her every action. Much ice cream was procured and consumed during this period. You can see her story in her own words in other posts. I’m not nearly as strong as her. There is no compass for what to do.

She ended up mid January getting her long luxurious trending toward silver highlight hair cut back to a short bob. A few weeks later now near the end of January chemo therapy kicked her hair out and it started shedding in double handfuls. After two days of her being in chemotherapy again I still haven’t got our home clean.

Go ahead and mix in the anniversary of the death of my first son (February first) the announcement that my new company is being sold/acquired, and the wife going into chemo within a few days. Looking over at a graph of my personality type my employer made me take and if I read it right it says I become more analytical under stress. Not that I should be feeling any stress. The red herring of logic says there are plenty of people out there with more on their plate than I. Listen I get that stress is not all bad and I’m pretty damn lucky. But, change is hard.

So, one of co-workers comes in and starts talking about a security person, and another co-worker who is visiting starts taking about other people in the security world. I’d met the person who know much closer and we talked about that a bit. That conversation was met by the other evening me watching this video.

The video talks about four stages of life. Where people are wondering if they have made any difference and working towards making a difference, or they have given up on that and transferred the baton to a protégé or other. Add all of that to Dr. Eugene Spafford a few days ago sending out nominations for the Cyber Security Hall of Fame and their being no area where I or any of the people who do what I do (security operations) would fit within that framework of fame. This isn’t about credit it is about legacy teetering on the relative merits of a newly acquired sense of mortality. No, none of this should make sense because it is raw emotion and logic is for the after action.

There I am thinking about security people and telling how this guy Jericho and Josh Corman gave one of the coolest presentations I had ever seen at ThotCon. With humor, humility, and a dash of reality they debunked things I’d been talking about for years. I really used to like to go to the security conventions of various hackventions because I liked seeing the thinking of the people. Out of the box thinking. There I am thinking about that and how in my opinion the vendor space of presentations has spoiled the analytical and functional thinking skills. There is some characteristic I personally can’t define but realize as a void in the discussions. Created when vendors started taking over the stages from the more eclectic thinkers. Change is hard and I accept the change in the various conventions.

I don’t drink, drug, or smoke so the conventions always had a huge penalty for me in the socialization aspect. I usually just hid in my suite, or went exploring when presentations were going on. Now I am a lucky bastard as one of my co-workers buys all of the convention videos and I can search our media stack and watch any convention I want to watch if it was recorded. I can be more selective but I miss the stumble into a small ignored room and find something truly unique. No, I’m not sure where this is going.

When the squirrel presentation happened I might have missed an inflection point. That may be the moment I decided to get back in government as I suck as an academic. Oh, I can teach really well. I can do research really well. I got tenure early. I even get along with academics pretty well. I just do other things much better. Whether it is defining metrics and scoping a new security program, or responding to bad guys on the wire. I can’t hack but I chase hackers pretty well. Though I am getting older and care less about the chase. Maybe it is puzzles? I don’t know. Sitting around teaching the same topic year in and year out would suck.

So, if I missed an inflection point, a place where the unique thinking I was seeing, witnessing, understanding was happening what is the issue? I can’t remember off the top of my head who said it, but “You can’t use the same thinking to solve the problems that thinking created.” Unique out of the box thinking can be just as wrong and harder to evaluate but it represents a pantheon of options that the inside the box claptrap is just going to continue. So, I left academia and went back to government. Obviously I’m in industry now but trying and failing at change is normal in Washington DC.

Thinking back to that inflection point and maybe making more out of it than I should I wonder about other points. Deciding to get married the first time. Doing my first assist on computer crime case in the 1980s. Not staying in law enforcement, working in a family business, and across numerous industry segments, and getting divorced and married again. You can look at things as an adventure or adversity. Perspective is the salve of distance.

Losing a child, having twins, being the father of two step children taught to hate my every breath. The circle or square of options cycling out of control always driving towards another minute, another second, another moment in the future. Seeing things I worked on in government driven into the dirt, policies abandoned, solutions that are less than ill considered. Having to balance those thoughts on the reality of the way I think may not be the way it should be solved. Coming back to the office and trying to think of a new, best, better, kinder or just hopeful way of doing things.

The closure of DerbyCon a life cycle in security conferences where people who don’t know me but I know them. I liked the family values with open bar vibe of DerbyCon. There is a treasure trove of people who believe and cycle through security in a wasteland of careers.

Is there a legacy lost or not created? Is it a fools errand to think any person can make a difference in the world where hate filled speech and people walking around looking to be offended rule the air waves? Is there no hope of change when acts of contrition are met with derision? That a sin of minimums is an error of fatal proportions. Where being a child no longer allows for mistakes? Do we live in a time where legacy is only notoriety?

Regrets are ghosts of mistakes past. Did I miss a confluence of events that might have changed history? Likely. I’m never going to be able test that and I must let the sunshine of today melt the cobwebs of yesterday. I’ve got a great team, I’ve got a great job, and challenge and opportunity allow me plenty of rewards in seeing them flourish.

]]>7550Plot Twist: Hairhttp://sveoti.net/archives/7530
Sun, 03 Feb 2019 22:36:37 +0000http://sveoti.net/?p=7530Read more →]]>Our hair is a huge part of our identity. It is often called a woman’s crowning glory.

I have had long and very long hair most of my adult life. By very long, I mean past my butt. My hair is part of my identity. It is part of my mannerisms, how I move through the world.

You have cancer. Damn. Your treatment will be chemotherapy. Yikes. One of my first questions was “will I lose my hair?” Without skipping a beat, or slowing down, my doctor said, “Yes.” And moved on to the next question. I did not move on quite as quickly.

There are all the stages of grief when you know you are going to lose a part of yourself. I went through all of them (and I am still going through them). There was denial – maybe I won’t lose my hair. I talked to a lot of people, read a lot, concluded I am losing my hair. Next stage. To be honest, I moved all the way to acceptance faster than I thought I would. I cannot control whether or not the chemo makes me lose my hair. I can control how I deal with it. (Hint: this does not mean I like it).

So, before my first round of chemo I went to get a haircut. I am sure it was the strangest appointment people had seen. We started by styling my long lovely hair. Big full spiral curls, hairspray, the works. Then my husband and I went outside and took pictures of me with my pretty long hair. As I went back into the beauty shop everyone said how beautiful my hair was. And then we washed all the curls out and started the cut. There were a few odd looks.

My hair dresser cut ponytails so I can donate my hair. I have not decided yet if I am going to, but the hair is saved just in case. And he had a real cute style for me. It was such a relief that he had thought about it because I really didn’t know what to do. Now I have a cute, wash and wear page boy.

They say your hair starts to fall out around the third week after you start chemotherapy.

It was right on time.

There is nothing quite as horrifying as washing your hair and coming away with literally fistfuls of hair. That was Monday morning, the third week after my first round of chemo. My hairbrush filled. I made the appointment I had been dreading to get my head shaved. That would happen on Friday. Everyday the hair loss increased – more hair in the shower, more hair in the hair brush, an increasing rain of hair until by Friday I was actually ready to shave my head.

My hairdresser is a hero. He has been amazingly kind and supportive through all of this. He shaved me head to a 1 guard so I have stubble. He gave me a gift of essential oils to help ease the itching and sensitivity on my scalp. And refused to let me pay him. This was a have to do it, not a haircut. And he is already thinking about how we will work with my hair as it grows back in. We are both kind of hoping my hair comes back in curly.

At least I am no longer dealing with hair coming out in clumps.

And my dear husband helped me take the stubble down to skin. This was not fun for him. In fact, it was the last thing he ever thought he would have to do. It was necessary. My scalp is increasingly sensitive and the stubble was making it worse. Taking it to skin allowed me better treat the sensitive scalp skin. This was pretty emotional for both us.

I am not going to lie. I was going to say I am not sure how I feel about this, but this sucks. It makes me cry. I feel a real sense of loss. Loss of part of me. Loss of my identity. I know I am not my hair, but my hair is (or was) part of me. I went from hair down to the middle of my back to stubble in less than a month. When I look in the mirror it doesn’t look like me.

I am looking at all sorts of hats, scarves, and wigs and none of them feel right to me, I have caved and am wearing a hat to protect my sensitive head but I can’t say I like it. But this is what you do to kill the cancer. This is part of the price. Someone asked me what I would give up to get rid of the cancer. I answered that I have already given up my hair.

And this is the hardest post I have written. Did I mention this sucks? Well it does. Fuck you cancer.

Hi, I’m Mitchel and this is my assistant Ron. Welcome to Wild Techdom supported by Mutual of Bromaha.

Today we travel to the far off wilds of the cube mazes of Silicon Valley. These are dangerous lands with an entire species never before seen on television. We will be assisting an anthropological team of experts there to catalog and verify the existence of specific species. We are always careful to not disturb or endanger these sensitive creatures.

Though the cubicle mazes may seem dangerous and easy to get lost. The herds of developers and project managers have crushed down the savannah of carpet between the bathrooms and all you can drink coffee bar. Many of the denizens will only leave for the siren call of a food truck. That is just what we’re going to use today. Ron is going to use a car horn to simulate the playful wail of a food truck arriving.

Why look there. Ron is stalking a developer. You can tell it is a fully formed 10X developer by the wiley look in his eyes. He is used to being stalked by the predators of this environment. The recruiter. The developer is getting up his courage to leave the protection of the cube maze. He is scampering for the door nearest where he heard the food truck. And, Ron is wrestling him to the ground. Watch those teeth Ron. While Ron, wrestles the developer to the ground I’m going to make some lovely lemon aid. You know that lemon-aid can be sweet or bitter just like most developers.

I see Ron has hog tied the developer and now the scientist approach. Watch the nips guys. Even tied up a 10X developer can calculate trajectories and intersection paths faster than a Cray Computer can become obsolete. There the scientists are tagging the developer. Don’t worry folks at home. With gauged ears the ear tag doesn’t even hurt. I imagine that it might even become a source of pride when returning to his herd.

Now, they’re getting ready to release the developer back into the wild. And, luck would have it a company provided food truck is arriving at the door now. The developer is focusing on the food truck. The last rope is released and he is scampering off none the worse for wear. Yes, folks this is a great day to see another successful capture and release.

And now a brogasm word from our sponsor.

Welcome back from the break and next we will see Ron wrestling with a creature rarely seen outside of the dim hallways of the server stack. Today we will be observing, capturing, and tagging a security engineer. Generally toothless and often lost without any clue on where they are going they still can be very dangerous.

You can easily spot the security engineer in a herd of developers. Developers show their true spots with vendor polo-shirts stating operating system tool sets. The security engineers tend towards black t-shirts that have white letters like “Got Root” or “400# Hacker”. Very sensitive to threats in the environment they have a gaze that watches the horizon for threats.

Unfortunately it looks like Ron and his helper Dawn have gotten close to the security engineer. Dawn is trying to capture the gaze of the subject. He almost, almost, and there she has eye lock on the subject. He is quivering. Ron grabs the engineer and the scientists pounce. This is a strong specimen Ron.

Ron is going to wrestle the security engineer as we sit back and enjoy this nice cool iced tea. Watch the claws Ron they don’t call themselves hackers for no reason. Unlike the developers the security type of the species can be very vigorous in refusing new information. They will even attack other members of the species for even suggesting something foreign to them.

]]>7526Beware the professional path. There be dragons herehttp://sveoti.net/archives/7282
Sat, 26 Jan 2019 17:14:26 +0000http://selil.com/?p=7282Read more →]]>

So, there I was talking to some people and I talked about focus of my career not being the same as longevity in my job. You see, long before the gig economy I started moving between jobs and looking for challenges to fix things. I wasn’t just interested in time clock check ins and moving through the day. There are some early formative moments in my life that created my career track. I get pretty consistent requests to mentor people. I have had more than a few people ask how they could have a career like mine, mistaking result for path, and I wonder if it is my job in life to be a warning to others.

I’m not a Zuckerberg or some other scion of the pantheon of silicon billionaires. I graduate from High School lucky they let me with a solid 1.7 or so GPA. I was a distinct product of a principle called tracking in public education that said I’d never go to college. I did not learn to write or do math in high school. I learned to weld, do engine mechanics, electronic and television repair, and how to mix a great margarita. I’ve ended up a pudgy, graying, middle manager at a moderate sized company with a great culture. When I was a young man, a junior in high school, a guy named Tom talked me into joining the Washington State Army National Guard. Off I went to basic training and to learn to drive tanks. When I got home from basic training to finish my senior year in High School I sat down with my fervent vodka swilling father one night. He said, “You are off to a good start to be just like me.” The next day I went down and inter-service transferred to the United States Marine Corps. You will not find a lot of people who went Army to Marines. Adaptability means sometimes taking the road others fear to tread.

I admit it up front and in front of all as my witness. I was not a good Marine. I didn’t shine in dress blue uniform, never owned the uniform, but I enjoyed my time in the Marines. I trained hard but was fat and slow. I shot like a demon on the range but never deployed to a combat zone. A short stint in the Marines, a pretty significant injury off the base, and on the street again. You have to have a plan when you didn’t have a plan.

Short stints at places that need help are personally rewarding even if they are not normal career paths. A stint as a reserve police officer for a tribe, a stint as a corrections officer at two different sheriff’s departments, and a lot of learning. Learning about people, stress, and a calibration of risk. The tribe needed good people in a bad way but had no money, the first sheriff’s department had just finished a jail, the second sheriff’s department had just gone through a huge investigation of corruption. These are the jobs that others pass on and give great experience. Flexibility is enhanced when you actually need it.

In 1993 I started a half decade of pain. I would do just about anything that was mostly legal to make money. I sold photographs, wrote in the pay on publication market, worked in the yachting industry installing electronics, crewed on race boats, delivered information security solutions, worked in a family business, and I even worked with different government agencies as a contractor. I did a lot of security work because I knew it, but not because it paid well. Meanwhile I was also a full-time student. I worked 80 hours or more a week on multiple jobs across wildly different industries. You can’t have adventure without adversity.

A career is not so much a path as it is a lengthy period of discovery resulting in a snail trail of results. I am warning the young professional about the lack of focus and the adversity of a career like mine. Don’t be like me with the pain and misery of broken marriages, always moving, having plans with a dozen forks and options. Constantly strategizing and never having a firm base to work from. Divorces are painful, they bring on many changes, but when they are done they are done.

In 1999 based on my experience in the military, my experience in information technology integration across numerous customers, and a newly minted masters degree in computer science. I was offered a senior position at a telecom running their Y2K project. Nobody else wanted the job. You know that highly critical failure prone and massive problem other people had been working on for almost a decade? I could point out the Y2K failures the insta-pundits never understood to show how critical the problem. How did I get the job? It wasn’t my stunning personality, or my good looks that got me the job. My lacking personality and infamous hound dog on Quaalude’s looks have limited my career far more than I care to admit. When it came to companies in distress, I wasn’t the first person they called, but I was the last person they called. Sometimes challenge and opportunity are based on the rest of the world not being willing to put up with the misery of long days and high stress.

I worked for another company as an integrator with some of the biggest companies in information technology. I showed up for work, I worked hard, took the phone calls at 2AM, and slept in my car when I was too tired to drive home. Adversity, abnormal discipline, and a penchant for self-loathing go a long way towards keeping a job and moving forward. Always have a plan with a lot of options and an optimized path toward a goal. Which means you have to have some desired end state, some goal, and be willing to deal with unhappy or less than the desired end state. I see in the pop-happiness life coach sphere of influence lots of people talking about not having goals, and very much a buddha approach to being in the moment. I looked into the bleary eyes of my vodka fueled father and saw the epitome of that just be happy approach to life. There is nothing wrong with being a ditch digger unless you’re a ditch digger.

Sitting in a diner in Albuquerque New Mexico a friend leaned across the table and looked me in the eyes. I had been riding my motorcycle and not got to where I really wanted to be that day. He noted the exhausted and hang dog look that was pretty much my normal look. This friend blithely said go get into academia. My in-laws were both academics. I had known many academics. I would find out that I am the antithesis of an academic. A rage aimed, caffeine fueled, damn the torpedoes, ugly, fat, freak who can’t write is not a good candidate for a tenure position. I put out four CV’s (starting with what the hell is a CV?) and got four interviews and three job offers. Only one was as faculty and near a body of water. How did I do in academia? Early tenure, elected to the faculty senate, and then elected to be the chair of the faculty senate, and all in the midst of a recession and some of the worst problems to beset academia in history. An organization in distress will welcome any beacon of hope for direction. Being where the pain point is will drive opportunity if you can handle the stress, and chance of disaster.

So, I gave up tenure. After staying at a job longer than I had ever intended or ever expected I gave up the golden ticket. I thought I’d stay, maybe camp out, but off to another institution for a variety of reasons I went. Like I owed the government a year of service. My academic institution owed me a sabbatical. I should have been able to go do my service, then return, but that was not to be. So, I quit. I was still in my doctoral classes and would soon graduate with a doctoral degree in technology which most people are clueless what that means. Still off to another institution which also was being stressed. The same recession driving a stake into land grant universities was being reflected as sequestration and massive lay-offs in the military university system.

I was told unequivocally I could stay when the military university was under stress but only if I told them who would need to go. I flip-flopped back to my previous public university system at a different campus. A few years there and the “we don’t like you” petty faculty wars had me flop back into government as an agencies CISO.

Yes, I gave up tenure a second time. Those who know anything about tenure likely figure rightly I am nuts. There is a time when you look at the people around you, and you know that it is time to move on. Either the mission, the values, or perhaps the day to day churn just don’t reflect your core beliefs. It takes a special person to work for substandard pay, with the long hours, and super human intellectual requirements to stay in academia. This drives a culture of knife fights over nothing. The table stakes are meaningless. The petty objectives of many academics are hollow. True intelligence requires introspection into your own biases. If you are in a bitter feud and fighting for something it should mean more than nothing.

As a CISO I was unremarkable. That is the fate of every first CISO at an organization that has never had one. Every requirement is new, every suggestion met with skepticism, and every result near arcane black magic. The CIO was a great guy but destined to leave. The organization had really cool technology. The responsibility was immense. Once again moving an organization off the dime of paperwork whipped security to real security burned good grace and likely credibility to the ground. Every event pointed out the errors and omissions in a system wrapped in the papyrus structures of risk. I exited the organization after less than a year. This is not abnormal for a CISO, and the fact that I was not replaced by the new CIO is a warning for the organization he just joined to lead. I exited with my reputation intact, and a few good friends.

After hours and hours, and late and very late nights, and damning problems with no good solution. In the haze of pain, and in the mind-numbing choice between bad and worse situations. It is quite obvious I had dropped back into the fire filled river of chaos. My oars aflame I tried to bring the best results possible from good idea fairy whacking to realized results, all while rowing like a mad man. I ended up working for the DHS.

The 2014 Federal Employee View Point Survey rated the DHS, Headquarters unit Intelligence & Analysis, Intelligence Operations, and Cyber Division as among the worst, of the worst, of the worst, of the worst places to work in the federal government to work. Employee turnover, morale, and productivity all were in the dumpster fire of careers. This sounds like a great opportunity for me to go make a difference said nobody ever. So, I joined the intelligence community, worked as a subject matter expert, and ended up running that dispossessed little fulcrum of pain known as cyber division. Where we turned around the productivity and morale issues, ended the high rate of turn over, and did so much more. I sacrificed my career in front of CNN, pissed off a sitting president, and ultimately, they took the division I turned around away from me.

I got promoted to the deputy undersecretaries staff. In some ways I would point the incongruity of the results to put it into perspective. My evaluations were stellar, my results off the charts successful, the capabilities and strategies worked out of the box. I was given a huge pay increase, and I was given a massive bonus. Yet, I was moved out of cyber to work critical infrastructure. This likely had nothing to do with me saying the Russian were hacking the 2016 election.

Sometimes the tea leaves are about as hard to read as the results of the FEVS when you want to know why people hate their job. On the surface the ocean may be calm, but the currents are swift, and the water filled with things that will eat you. Fish or cut bait?

The intelligence community takes care of its own, but I looked up from the disaster of being right in front of the cameras and looked for a new horizon. I was a tourist in the intelligence community and burden if I remained. The president said nobody good worked in government, so I got out. I ended up in my current job. Working for a great company, having a great time, and looking back trying to figure out what happened. Sometimes it is your lot in life to represent what is only possible for a passing idiot to do and maybe be the Peter principle in action. Nobody ever thinks that of themselves, but those who can imagine it and fight against the result move further than those who never reflect. Each job, whether more or less responsibility, is a test and challenge of your capability. When you succeed you may be seen as a failure. When you do the right thing you may be called wrong. When you act with honor you may be called evil. When you charge into the chaos and unknown you have to have the will and vigor to pull yourself out of that pain. History is a poor template for success but a great pattern for failure.

Every job, career change, challenge, and goal I have experienced was a path shared by friends and foes alike. I have broken bread with senior leaders who will never remember me, and people just joining the work force I will never remember. Admitting to not remembering everybody you ever meet may seem harsh, but I admit that I can’t even call my dog by the right name regularly. Having met, ate dinner with, shared stages with, and socialized with a lot of senior leaders over the years I think I can safely say they are people too. I have also thanks to other jobs played chess with murderers and rapists. These are people too with a unique bend to what it means to be civilized. All of that experience can be an indicator of why I am less than impressed with the self-importance of others, but I realize that most people who don’t recognize seniority haven’t attained it. There is a certain hubris in being well reasoned on results of your efforts.

I can’t imagine why anybody would want to have a career like mine. Why anybody would seek me out for mentorship. One back breaking, mind bending, torturous task after another, and a life filled with the desperation of fleeting success. These are not the paths to a career, but they may result in good stories. In the fiction of my own mind I am the antagonist challenging my success. I’m not sure I’d change what I’ve done, but I’m pretty sure there were lots of places where the right decision might have been other than the direction I chose. The path from where you are, to where you want to go, and the stepping stones of that path. It is not short, easy, or safe. It is filled with the hobbling shards of life and pain surrounded by hard work and effort. Short cuts are for the movies.

Why do government workers stay on the job? In 2017 I was looking at the direction that the new senior leaders were leaning in DHS Intelligence and Analysis. I was feeling conned because I had a departure path in early 2017 and the DUSIO (Mike) asked me to stay and promised I’d be considered to run Cyber for DHS. Of course he left, the new guy came in (Robin) , and made basically the same promise. The acting USIA (Patty) was a quite smart young lady and I asked her if I would be considered. She said yes. So, I passed on another lucrative exit path. The new Under Secretary Intelligence and Analysis (USIA, David Glawe) was finally confirmed and the hiring board was convened.

Well…. Actually it was just the USIA with no HR oversight. He chose somebody else, I got “promoted” out of cyber, and I started looking for a new exit path. Anybody who thinks I’m upset and sour doesn’t understand my motives, and might want to think a little harder. I actually applied to work in the Trump administration. I put service over everything else and when the “Never Trumpers” were going nuts I volunteered. All I have ever cared about is service to my nation. Right now I look pretty awesome because I left government service, left Washington DC, got a job in an industry that specifically does zero work with the US government, and is growing internationally.

I take the toughest, nastiest jobs, and work with it. I worked at the DHS. I was a Marine. My law enforcement time wasn’t some sexy television show solving crimes in an hour but the nastiest role in law enforcement as a county corrections officer. This career wasn’t some romantic version of “Orange is the new black.” Correction work is take every shitty task the patrol and detectives can’t/won’t do and get it done. Corrections is dangerous and politically tainted. Reflecting back I was a corrections officer in various roles almost as long as I was a tenured professor. Nobody has a hero that is a corrections officer. There was a bias in my time towards university educated for patrol and detectives and I didn’t have that check box. Now people would suggest you need a masters degree. There is a particular spin on the world where mission drives results. That spin also suggests service is it’s own reward.

I’ve listened to some YouTube videos by the acerbic money mogul Dan Pena. I can listen, consider, validate, and then discount that which does not work within my reality. I can even laugh at the outlandish statements without rancor. I’ve also listened to the Donald Trump and political class of the world talk horribly about anybody they disagree with.

Dan Pena and his “snowflake” test values force over smart, and results over methods. Mr. Pena values the military and hates service to other than self. He passionately states become a billionaire if you want to do good. A view I don’t necessarily disagree with, but a view that as ironic.

Donald Trump focuses on personal attacks of people he disagrees with. He values those with large bank accounts as a core social value. The profit bloated world of these kind of people implode on the pragmatic reality of elementary school teachers, indigent preachers, fire fighters, police officers, enlisted members of the military, and even the cranky bitch at the Department of Motor Vehicles. We need them all to make a society run. The political class considers the common middle class to be fodder or serfs along with government workers of all kinds. They don’t need the DMV they got people to do all that stuff.

There is nothing more disingenuous than a rich guy saying to a government worker, just do odd jobs for your land lord, take out a loan, what do you mean you don’t have any savings? Alright, here we are. The middle class is a purgatory of quaint falsehoods. We’ve gone from one wage earner, two cars, and a bought for house. To two wage earners, one car, and a house you rent from somebody with money. Savings are meager when the pay check doesn’t pay for the basics. No where is that more apparent than the beleaguered government workers.

Saying something unrealistic, crazy, or uncouth isn’t better, smarter, faster, or legitimate. Just because you can curse, scream obscenities, use Twitter to rant against the people who challenge you. Just because you have an office, money, or capability to ruin peoples lives. These do not confer legitimacy.

I value America. I value government workers. I value industry. I value the higher road. I have already donated to some charities helping furloughed workers. The lost trust, relevance, and legitimacy will take a long time to repair. Trying to force the hand of Speaker Pelosi President Trump said most of the government workers furloughed were democrats. I thought Mr. Trump was President of the United States and had the health and welfare of all in mind.

My treatment is what they call EPOCH – a combination of very nasty drugs that kill cancer (die you f*cker). Due to the nature of my chemo treatment, I am in the hospital for each round.

Sign outside my door

I will have 6 cycles of chemotherapy. Each cycle is 21 days. The first 5 days (96 hours of continuous IV infusion) of each cycle is spent in the hospital receiving the chemotherapy via infusion. My particular treatment requires constant monitoring.

Life in the hospital

I started my first chemotherapy treatment at 6pm. I have 4 chemo bags and each runs for 24 hours. Then I have a 30 minute bag at the end.

I have a private room. It is large but bland. The nurses are all very friendly and very patient with all my questions (and I ask a lot of questions). They are also really good about offering insights and letting me know what to expect.

There is a fairly constant level of activity in the halls and in my room. Nurses come to evaluate me every 4 hours – they take blood, check my PICC line to ensure it is flowing properly, take my vitals, ask me about pee and poop, talk about medications, symptoms, etc. Shift changes happen around 7am and 7pm. There is more activity then as the incoming and outgoing nurses handover and the new nurses introduce themselves.

Sleep in the hospital is fitful. The bed is not that comfortable and I have an IV line hooked to my left arm so finding a comfortable sleeping position is a little challenging. I have 2 IVs and each one has a pump that keeps everything flowing. Pumps also have alarms for a variety of reasons and mine went off a couple of times during the night. They also make an odd noise as part of their normal operation – a kind of squeezing plastic noise.

I have a lot of freedom of movement. I can get out of bed anytime, walk around, change where I am sitting. My main constraint is the IV pole I am attached to. The pumps are electric, so while I am stationary they are plugged in and when I move around I unplug them and they run on battery. And I am confined to the floor I am on.

I am an early riser – I have been for a very long time. My first morning I was up at 5:30am. This was in part due to a pump alarm and the timing of nurses checking on me. It is all good. I got up, went to the bathroom, and went for a little walk in the halls. The night charge nurse offered me coffee which I of course accepted. And then I sat in my room, reading email, news, writing, and generally chilling as I drank my coffee.

I think combatting boredom is the toughest challenge during the chemotherapy infusion itself. I do not feel bad at all. In fact, the cocktail of medications they have me on has me remarkably comfortable. Since I started this cycle with Rituxan, I feel pretty good. Everything I have read and everything everyone has told me is that it is the week after the chemotherapy infusion when you feel bad.

So Day 1 wasn’t bad.

Day 2 was busy. I had an ECHO procedure to make sure my heart was ok for the treatment. I had music therapy. A prayer with a member of the faith team. A consult with the aesthetician. And a morning of meetings for work.

I slept pretty well that night but woke up feeling really sticky and sweaty due to the hot flashes.

And then there was day 3. Day 3 was not a good day. It starts with me asking for a shower and being told no. just no, not going to happen. I cried. A lot. I was sweaty, sticky, uncomfortable, and most miserable. My doctor had told me I could take showers, and now a different doctor and nurses were saying no. And not just for one day for my entire 5 day stay. Yuck!

I pulled myself together, washed my hair in the sink, washed my face, wiped down with a shower towelette, put on clean leggings. I started working out how to solve this problem. 5 days is a really long time to go without a shower.

The aesthetician came back and gave me a facial. That was the perfect remedy. She smoothed away the past 6 weeks of worry and stress and turned my very bad day into a tolerable one.

I worked out that I would be able to change my shirt when they changed my chemo bag. I set out a clean shirt and made sure the nurse understood that I would be disconnected from everything long enough to change my shirt. Non-negotiable. There was a 20 minute break changing my chemo bag – more than enough time for a shower – just sayin’.

I was up really late on day 3 just feeling mad. I did finally sleep.

Day 4 (still chemo bag 3 for those counting) was better. The nurse made more effort to help me feel comfortable. We talked about options for showers and that timing would be the most important factor. And my doctor called me to answer one question and then asked how I was doing. I told her about the shower issue without any of my mad or drama. She asked if I wanted a shower today or if I could stay with what we have been doing for the rest of this hospital stay. And then she told me she would talk to the other doctor about this and make sure to put a note in my orders that says I get a shower. She said this would be fixed for the next cycle.

Physically I have been wiped out. Not just low energy, but no energy. I started to do a few things and ended up falling asleep. The nurse thinks the chemo is probably catching up with me. I think I am at the end of the uplift I get from the Rituxan too.

Day 5 in the hospital (still working on chemo bag 4) was uneventful. When you know you get to go home, you start counting down the hours.

The night nurse last night was my least favorite. She insisted on turning on all the lights and making sure I was fully awake every 4 hours to take my vitals. I do not like having my sleep interrupted under the best of circumstances. She got my grumpiest face. I am sure she thought she was being thorough. Mostly she was being annoying.

Chemo bag 4 finished right on schedule. There is one additional chemo drug they don’t mix with the rest but give at the end. It only takes 30-45 minutes to run. That one was interesting. IT runs really fast, so much so that you can hear the pump churning. I had a bit of a reaction. About 10 minutes before it finished I got a sudden and odd headache across the top of my scalp. The nurses stopped the pump, slowed it down, and gave me some Tylenol. Once this one was finished, the headache completely disappeared.

And then I got to go HOME!!!!

On Monday I returned to the hematology office for a shot of Neulasta to help boost my white cell count. And yes, this was an injection in my arm. They really can’t give up sticking me with needles. Honestly, anything to keep me strong so I can get through these treatments. Killing cancer to the focus.

One of the hardest things for me prior to being admitted to the hospital for 4 (now 5) days of inpatient chemotherapy was knowing what to expect. What would I be allowed to do? Not allowed to do? What should I pack?

Would I be allowed to take showers?

Would I be allowed to leave my room? The floor?

I asked my doctor these specific questions.

I was told to bring my toiletries, my clothes, and myself. I would be fine. We would have to coordinate the timing for showers but they would be allowed.

So I packed several sets of clean clothes. I packed my toiletries, assuming I would be allowed to take showers.

Monday was an immunotherapy day followed by hospital admission and the start of chemo. They weren’t sure if they were going to start the chemo Monday evening or wait until Tuesday morning. I asked why bother to be admitted on Monday night if they weren’t going to start the chemo until the next day. They decided to start Monday at about 6pm.

I didn’t think about it too much on Monday night. I had fitful sleep being away from home and surrounded by all the medical noises and nurses who woke me up to check on me every few hours.

Tuesday morning came, I started my day, had lots of visitors, and again didn’t think too much about it. By Tuesday evening I was feeling a little grimy, still wearing the same shirt and leggings I had started with Monday.

I slept a lot better on Tuesday night, but I suffered from my normal hot flashes most of the night (this is a post menopause thing, not a cancer thing). The end result is that I was really sweaty and sticky by Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning…nurse comes in to check on me and I ask…May I take a shower today? The answer was NO, you are hooked up to the IV and we do not disturb the IV at all for anything. And off she went. It occurred to me at that moment that not only was I not going to get a shower but that I was trapped in the shirt I was wearing without any hope of changing it for at least 12 hours, the same shirt I put on Monday morning.

I spent the next hour or so crying. I was hot, sweaty, sticky, grimy, about as far from any sense of normal as I could be and I was hopelessly miserable.

At shift change the nurse came back, asked what was wrong, I explained through my tears. The doctor came through making rounds, they asked him. He said no…risk of infection too high. I pointed out that I will be taking a shower the moment I get home. Somehow that is ok. It is the IV combined with the shower they are concerned about. Note: This was not my doctor but the doctor on call making rounds.

I got over myself. I washed my hair in the bathroom sink (where the faucet is far too close to the back of the sink to really get your head under), I washed my face, and I used Action Wipes (a shower in a packet) to wipe most of the sweaty icky off my body. Then I changed my leggings and set out a clean shirt. I informed basically everyone that I would be changing my shirt at 6pm when they changed the chemo bag. This was non-negotiable.

I watched the clock, anxious for the opportunity to put on a clean shirt. 6pm came. The chemo bag was empty. My nurse came, took it down, disconnected me so I could change my shirt. And then it took 20 minutes before they had the staff to hang the new chemo bag. I can take 2 showers in that amount of time.

Let’s break down the concerns.

The PICC line has to stay dry (risk of infection)

I have an outstanding waterproof sleeve that I use to take showers at home and I brought it with me to the hospital

I can’t take a shower with the IV attached (risk of infection)

Every day they have to disconnect the IV to change the chemo bag – there is the opportunity

I think that’s it.

So, by communicating the timing (which no one did, including me) I could have had the opportunity to wash and put on fresh clothes, in the time it takes to change the chemo bag.

Allowing me to shower and change once a day keeps me feeling fresh and somewhat myself. On the flip side, not allowing me to shower or change for 5 days makes me feel dirty, uncomfortable, and less and less like myself. In short, it makes me miserable.

I know there are trade-offs. I know there are risks. I also know that most risks can be mitigated. And there is value in treating patients as actual people and not just a tumor house.

Going without any shower for 5 days is unacceptable. And it cannot be healthy.

Dear doctors and nurses…DO BETTER.

Update from MY doctor…She called to check on me and answer a question I had. I told her I had been banned from showers. She was not happy about this and we worked out a plan to solve this. She is going to talk to the other doctor and she is going to put an order in my chart for showers for the next cycle so the nursing staff is clear on her expectations for me. This post has all the drama I experienced, but I think the issue is solved without having to go through all the drama with my doctor.

Academic journal articles come in a variety of flavors, qualities, and availabilities. If you have been gathering journal articles and other artifacts of scholars over your academic career you will have a healthy trove of original and recent articles. Each one of these articles and books will help you out in the future. I have written, reviewed, and edited hundreds (thousands) of academic articles and the following is a quick summation of the way to read a journal article.

First, there will be a lot of people that say the following method is feeding the millennial/genx penchant for TL;DR (to long didn’t read) and short attention span of the electronic generation. Quite simply that is bull shit. With the proliferation of journals and the stupid policies of academia being publish or perish articles that are awesome, good, and poor are all over even the best rated journals. Second, you are using your time to get to the heart of something and that shows focus. Third, people have been using generational schism since Og was a caveman. It is silly. Fourth, this is a generalized recipe to get you started. As you build expertise you will get faster and faster and able to handle the one-of special cases that I won’t cover here.

What you want to know about a journal article.

A journal article will be experimental, meta, or opinion/how to. That means it uses a scientific method, observational strategy or is expressing an informed set of arguments. We are going to focus on the experimental as opinion articles is outside of our scope today, and meta will likely fit into the structure.

The general structure of a journal article, and usually found in the following order.

Abstract

Introduction

Literature review

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Bibliography

Don’t get stuck on titles. If your goal is to get comfortable with a domain of knowledge that you know nothing about then you should read the entire article straight through. But, if you are looking for references in the literature review of an article you are writing, methods for something you want to experiment with, or you want to see how other people are getting answers a partial read will fulfill your desire.

In general.

Read the conclusion first. You will want to highlight the hypothesis which should be restated from the introduction. If the experiment was a bust you will now know that. If the article does not support your assertions (meta study) or the principles that you are trying to evoke (experimental) that will be very obvious in the conclusion. Often authors will state courses of future work and that can help you in the selection process of future papers. I keep a journal that has dozens of ideas to write about based on what I come up with and what other people come up with. Since I work in a particular domain if somebody else comes up with the same idea I will cite them when I write on the topic, “X in a parallel effort suggested while writing on Y that the following was a topical question.”

Read the methods second. Poor practices and re-writes of journal articles usually happen when the scientist did not focus on the correct bias, control for bias, or started out with a poorly formed plan to study a problem. You can harvest entire sections of articles (citing correctly) the methods used. As part of literature reviews you should include other domain scientists articles methods to support why your chosen methods are correct. Think of it this way. The methods are the tool while the results and conclusions are the artifact of those methods.

At this point if everything on your review. And, your review of a scientific article should always be with skepticism looking for every chink in the thinking of the writer. That is what science is about and why publishing in the domain is so hard. You should make a decision on whether to read the results section (dig deeper) or read the bibliography.

The bibliography is a sign post to bias.

If you are going to write in a domain or become an expert in a domain you should download and keep in a citation tool like Zotero, Mendley, or EndNote all of the articles you find in a bibliography. I usually categorize these as reviewed or not reviewed. You are looking through a bibliography to see if the authors are citing themselves, using relevant resources, or are using the sources correctly. It does not take much time to find that themes of incorrect assertion move through academic circles quickly and are cited using the same sources. Yet those sources do not support the assertion made.

This is important.

Whatever you write whether a tenured professor or a freshman engineer can and will be used against you in the future. This sucks but is simply the truth of a hyper offended world that will impugn character based on the youthful and aged indiscretion of a moment. Cite everything.

Mine the bibliography.

Every time you read an article gather up those sources. It will not take very long for you to have a good handle on the quality and capability of the writers and journals. Further after an undergraduate career you will find that not only are you a domain expert, that you are literally and I mean LITERALLY one of the smartest book taught people in the room. You can use that swath of knowledge to better focus real and relevant work in a way that others won’t. You have also learned different and significant thinking strategies based on your developing understanding of experimentation. You will be able to write cohesively procedural based scientific papers rather than opinion or how to articles.

Highlight.

If you take articles to a direct to electronic mechanism you can often highlight articles based on principles I’ve written about previously. I will also write questions, suggestions on bias, and other notes about the article. I have been known to create bibliographical mind maps of citations and article sources to show the timeline of authors thinking on topics. It also highlights what appears to be the end of the road where ideas seem to have stalled or people have not picked something up. It also helps to not be using information from the wrong branch or being prepared to explain why I reached for an entire other tree of knowledge to support something.

Quality is not a function of opinion.

Wikipedia, most newspapers, most magazines, and the student sitting next to you are not the sources of scientific information. They are not citeable sources. In general they are not peer reviewed, they often are reporting on a scientific topic (something you NEVER want to do), and even when they provide sources (Wikipedia) they do not provide the scientific argument structure that is important. Just as a side point, encyclopedias are not appropriate sources either.

That all said. You should now have a structure around what to read first, how to read it, and what to do with the information. You also have a background on the sources you should be looking for and how to mine those sources for other sources. You even have a strategy for displaying visually sources and materials to see what the root and leaves of the knowledge tree you are looking at. I would usually say start with the very first week of the very first day of university building your questions (in a journal or electronic notebook) and mining the sources of every subsequent article. With that done you will have the broadest appreciation of the topics.

Students who start down this path will often get to point and structure their thinking around chemistry, physics, math, sociology or similar. The students will create separate citation libraries based on the class, the topic, or the paper they write. With the advent of efficient search, dynamic tagging in most of the citation tools, the fact most academic topics are becoming multi-disciplinary (another word for relevant) you can keep it all in one library. Back that up, keep it safe and use it often.

If this helps out at all I’ll write further on things like how to write a semester paper, and other such topics. Let me know and keep being awesome.

WARNING: There are graphic pictures included. If you are squeamish now is your chance to look away.

What is a PICC line?

A PICC Line is Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter. Basically it is a long thin tube inserted directly into a vein starting in the upper arm and threaded to a more central location in the chest with external access ports left exposed.

The PICC line is inserted under local anesthesia using a combination of ultrasound and fluoroscope to guide the placement.

Getting the PICC line placed did not hurt. I was awake and chatting with the doctor and nurses. Afterwards my arm was very, very sore. This lasted for about a day and has steadily been improving. It does seem to feel achy after a full day of normal use.

Why did I get a PICC line instead of a port?

This is the most common question I have been getting since most people receiving chemotherapy get a port. There are 3 reasons I have a PICC line instead of a port.

The size and location of my tumor (12cm x 10cm x 6cm and directly behind my sternum) make the proper placement of a port problematic

The aggressive nature of my treatment is breaking apart the tumor quickly which could lead to clots and the PICC line apparently allows for better mitigation of this at this time

There is healing time after a port is placed before it can be used for treatment and my doctor does not want to wait that long to start my treatment (she told me this week that she wanted to start my chemotherapy treatment even before Christmas).

What is it like?

It is like having a large bit of hardware stuck on and in you. It really doesn’t hurt but it is a little irritating. It has to be kept dry. You have to be careful not to snag the access ports (I have 2) on anything. You should not push on it (like if sleeping on your side). And I have to have the dressing professional changed once a week (they even sign and date their work).

The upside is that instead of sticking me with needles for blood tests (something I get to do very frequently now) and hooking me up with IV infusions (also a regular occurrence) they just use the access ports.

Another advantage is that the PICC line protects my veins from the chemo drugs which are apparently quite nasty.

What are the challenges? What are some solutions (they didn’t tell you about)?

I am pretty sure that the doctors and nurses involved in caring for people who have PICC lines have never had one themselves.

I asked about how to take care of the PICC line. I was told I have to keep it dry. I ask how do I take a shower. With a fair amount of enthusiasm I am told to wrap my arm with saran wrap and the stick on press and seal is supposed to work well too. Um….really? A nurse practioner pointed me to better alternatives but didn’t have specific suggestions. A little research, a lot of reviews from PICC line wearers and I was able to order a good water proof sleeve with neoprene cuffs on each end. It works well. Waterproof sleeve

The second challenge was protecting the PICC line and access ports during the day and night so I didn’t snag them on anything. The surgery nurse gave me a gauze tube. When I looked sad at it the nurse in recovery told me I could cut up an old tube sock for a cover. The phlebotomists and the infusion center nurses told me the same thing.

I want everyone to think about this. I am very ill and not feeling good. I am going to be like this for at least the next 6 months. I now have a significant bit of hardware attached to me full time to remind of just how sick I am and how lousy I feel. And the professionals taking care of me are recommending I cover it with an old cut up sock. How does that make you feel? Not good. Seriously…offer better options.

I did some research. There are a lot of much better options. After looking at all the options I settled on this. These are made by people who have or have had PICC lines and they are perfect. They are snug but not tight. They have special slits for the access ports to slide through so you can keep the access ports off your skin (that is more irritating than you would imagine). They are infused with silver so they are anti-microbial. And they are not ugly or cludgy. I bought 3 in different colors and patterns. Picc Line cover

I am still learning about my new hardware. I have not had my first dressing change yet. So far the shower cover is working well and the PICC Line cover is comfortable and easy to use. I will post more updates as I have them.

This is not the ideal way to spend the holidays. I was supposed to be on vacation with my family, sailing to the Bahamas, relaxing in the sun and playing in the warm blue water.

Instead I spent the week of Christmas going to multiple doctors appointments, a PET scan on Christmas Eve, a bone marrow biopsy the day after Christmas, and my first immunotherapy treatment that Friday. This first treatment actually made me feel better. This was followed up with a new set of medications to be taken at home.

The tumor in my chest is very large and directly behind my sternum. It was 12cm x 10cm x 6cm at the PET scan. No wonder I have been short of breath.

My doctor wanted to schedule appointments for the week of New Years too. I negotiated to have an entire week without any appointments. I found out later that she would have preferred to start my chemo before Christmas.

For my week off I went sailing. It was a day sail, 4 hours away from the dock, wind in the sails, waves rolling the boat. It was glorious.

We had a relaxing New Years Eve and New Years Day. Just spending time with my kids, helping them get ready for the Spring semester. We drove the boys back to school on Sunday.

Next week will be back to busy. I am getting the PICC line inserted, a second immunotherapy treatment, and I am getting my hair cut. I am starting to make peace with losing my hair, but I suspect this will be emotional.

I have been doing lots of thinking and planning. How will we keep things taken care of? What about food? Laundry? Keeping the boat clean? I am pretty sure I have these covered. The grocery store will deliver and I can have fully prepared meals delivered as well. We already use a service for laundry. And I can hire a service to clean the boat inside and out.

I have also been thinking and planning for my mental and physical health. I know the next 6 months are going to be rough. I also know I can work on making myself stronger as I go through treatment. I am going to use the Wim Hof breathing method daily as a meditation and to help keep my heart rate lower. I am going to do a 30 minute yoga practice every day that I am able. I am going to study Spanish, read, and work as much as I can.

It is going to be an intense 6 months. A lot is going to happen fast and the time between will likely be filled with boredom. I know I am going to have good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours. And I know I will come through this, likely stronger and probably sassier than ever (you have been warned). I am surrounded by much love and more support that I could ever have imagined and this helps more than anyone will ever really know.

]]>7487How to study: When there is a text bookhttp://sveoti.net/archives/7479
Tue, 08 Jan 2019 03:36:50 +0000http://sveoti.net/?p=7479Read more →]]>The following is NOT the only way to study. It is a way to study and I expect you will adapt it and make it your own. Between an associates degree, two bachelors degrees, a masters degree and a doctoral degree the following is a strategy for creating the best outcome from a class.

Educational books and text books are created on a hybrid approach to information flow. The most important information is first in the chapter, the front of each paragraph, and the conclusions of the chapter. The chapters are usually set up from start to finish with general information to specific topics.

That means there are some specific techniques you can form into a rapid learning strategy with great outcomes.

Do this before you go to class.

Gut the material. Read the first section of an assigned chapter, the first sentence or two of each paragraph, and the first paragraph of each subsequent section. Read the sentence on either side of each bolded word (sometimes they use italics). Read any call out boxes (gray boxes, special sections) or the titles of figures, diagrams or pictures. Read the entire conclusion section of the chapter. You can highlight sections based on this technique. If your professor is using a textbook provided PowerPoint presentation it will basically be the same. Why not just read the PowerPoints? You lose the information flow.

While you are in class.

Cement the context.Write down clearly EVERY question that the professor asks. A good professor will generally ask questions that are open ended and may be very easy to get down and a lot harder to answer. An excellent technique is to write the questions down in or near the section where the content to answer it is located in the text book. If you are using a Kindle or other note taking software you can use call outs or the notes section. Some Kindle applications allow you to basically make flash cards to study later.

Why not read the entire chapter through before you get to class. It can be a waste of time. You are learning and the context, information, data, and reasoning you need to do may be very difficult to accomplish. The principle of reading topic sections first will give you context, and allow you reflect on professorial questions.

After Class.

Make the information yours. Go back and read the entire chapter from start to finish. It will actually be much easier and you may see areas of concern, question, or things you really need to understand better. This is your third trip through the material. If there are citations inline, end of page, or end of the chapter it is time to start pulling on that thread. A good technique is to download those references when possible and place them in a citation tool like EndNote, Mendely, Zotero or similar. Gut them just like you did the chapter before you went to class. You are creating the citation library necessary for writing a paper in the class.

How to know the questions before the professor. You may or may not have questions at the end of the chapter. If you do have questions on the left side of the margin I like to write the question number where the information can be found. If these are assigned as part of the homework you are likely far ahead with your highlighting. The standard text book comes with a question bank often times and that question bank is based on the very sections you highlighted. A good technique is underline the answers to the questions, so you can see what is highlighted and underlined. This is giving you an idea of where the professor is likely focusing. Some professors are just lazy and have no structure. Those are the breaks and you will likely get that idea early rather than late in the semester.

Before an exam.

Get an A on the exam. Depending on the program and professor you will have read 8 to 12 chapters from a book at the end of the semester. Standard text books are usually written around 16 chapters or 32 chapters so they fit into a standard semester. Your job is to gut the material across the board. This should be your fourth trip through the material. Read each of the questions you wrote down. These are likely the exam questions or close to it. If you are allowed to make notes, for an open note test, you should have highlighted the important parts. If you are allowed an open book test. OMG you are set in gold.

During an exam.

Use your time wisely. Answer the questions you are sure you know and go back. Some computer tests will not allow this so you will have to adjust based on the test administration technique. Some interesting insights from years of giving tests. Lots of students don’t answer questions. On a multiple choice you have between 20% and 25% getting the question right with a guess. Strangely, if you change an answer you have better than odds even of getting the question wrong. I have seen many times on exams people change a right answer to a wrong answer.

Not all professors should be trusted. A great indicator of a sucky professor is the use of a lot of double negatives in test questions. If you see two double negatives in test questions the professor is likely an idiot or using a poorly constructed test bank. There are many types of test questions that don’t test the material but test the aptitude of test takers. I’ll try to cover test taking in a future blog post.

I don’t have enough time for that.

You get what you pay for. Somebody is paying for your education and at some point you have to determine how much you respect yourself. There are various rules on how much you should study per credit hour you take. Figure if you are in class for 3 hours you should likely be studying between 6 and 9 hours per class. This is where the Pareto distribution comes in. If you study 3 hours you will likely get a B. You will be doing what the 80 percent are willing. Double that number and you will be in solid “A” territory. If you are really good and study 9 hours per 3 hours you will have a good chance of being top in the class.

Zero to 9 hours is a failure waiting to happen. Studying is like a muscle you have to exercise. The habits you build doing it regularly will manifest as results over time. The more you use the tools the easier they get to results. Start with the basics found here and you will already be doing much more than most students.

Follow ups.

I will look at writing on how to take notes in a math class, how to write a paper, and how to interact with a tutor in the future. Let me know if this helps you. I might do a YouTube on this too if you think that will help. If there are worksheets or additional readings apply the same principles as you did for the text book.

]]>7479Out with 2018 and in with 2019http://sveoti.net/archives/7450
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 04:03:14 +0000http://sveoti.net/?p=7450Read more →]]>This year was very interesting for Sydney, Stuart, Simon and Sam. We gave away, or threw away over 90% of our stuff. Changed where we live. Changed our jobs Changed how we live. Well we had a lot going on.

Incident response as interdiction and cycle? Still waiting though ATT&CK is getting close. Miss.

IOS Full screen representation of actual computer? Miss.

Hunting is a buzz word. Miss.

Not to bad but nothing revolutionary. That only leaves the meat and potatoes of what the heck happened during 2018.

So what happened in 2018?

You can’t have adventure without adversity otherwise it is just a vacation. After crashing out of the 2017 Iron Butt Rally, being hidden away in the intelligence community because I wasn’t very Trumpian, and in general not sure which way was up Sydney and I sat down and wondered what the heck we were going to do. Simon and Stuart would be graduating. In early January I started talking about leaving government and getting as far away from government as possible. Goal: Get away from the political fray of the Trumpian ignorance.

Don’t get me wrong. I truly loved the mission, the idea of securing America, of making the intelligence communities of other nations have fits. I’m a bit of an iconoclast and not the idealistic type. As such I liked the puzzle, the figuring out what bad guys were doing, and making, helping, fostering the success of others. If I was going to leave government that left industry or academia. Goal: Work for a company that did not do business with the federal government.

Sydney was equally unhappy with her job at USACE. From the new CIO on down they were having a lot of trouble figuring out how to be professional and successful without creating a really negative work place environment. There was no evil here, but there also just seemed to be a lack of enthusiasm (my perspective of her concerns). Once again Sydney loved the mission of USACE and how it impacted almost every American positively. Goal: Work somewhere that respects all people and not just a few heroes.

So, if you’re going to leave where you going to go. Getting a change in attitude had been a plan for a very long time. Sam had a job offer from the Army and Marines to be a senior leader of their technology programs. Sydney had turned down a job earlier in 2017 working for SCOTUS. As “cyber” people getting jobs did not seem to be a huge issue. Then a company called Sam and he talked to a guy named Rick. Rick said he had this company that was all messed up, and would Sam be interested in interviewing. So, Sam looking up the company said.. “Umm maybe in the new year.” Along comes a Trump and a government shut down while Sam was on an interview/conference with the Army.

While Sam was sitting at the table having just talked to a senior leader at Army about a possible job in the middle of nowhere, but fun to accomplish, Sam got a call from a guy named Michael. Sam chatted via text with the VP of security at this company who said, “Move to Florida, live on a boat, ride your motorcycle, drive a convertible, have a lot of fun.” Looking out the window at ARCYBER it was snowing. So, off to Florida Sam and Sydney would go.

There was a job opening of a Security Operations Center Manager that Sydney successfully applied for.. Sam would come in and interview with all of the people who could ever report to him, as many people who would be peers, random people walking down the hallway, and a few other people. The social level to the interview process was a significant event. Sam accepted a job a Senior Director.

Ultimate Software is headquartered out of Weston Florida and is a top employer according to about a dozen different awards that it has earned. With a dozen offices in Weston, offices in Atlanta, Santa Ana, Toronto, Singapore and a few other major locations it has a global span. For the first few months Sam just struggled to get his feet on the ground, but in June he took over a newly created group called Security Operations (self named) which is about 60 plus a few deep of people who simply do computer security.

After getting started at Ultimate Sam and Sydney with Simon and Stuart during the spring break bought and sailed a new home south from Charleston South Carolina. The Moody 46 is a blue water sailboat. It has accommodations to rival a lot of homes. Where Sam and been raised around boats, done a lot of sailing and motor cruising with his parents and in adult life continued to do club racing. Sydney, Simon and Stuart had never sailed, been on the ocean, or over nighted on a boat.

The family is the best adventure buddies a dad could ever ask for as the three of them listened carefully. They watched what was going on closely, And learned quickly. For Sam this was a brand new boat, with brand new boat problems, and lots of systems that made sense to the previous owner with all the little things that owners just put up with. Kick it here to make that thing over there work. You can’t just know that kind of stuff.

The sail south for everybody was spectacular. Risky and fraught with some peril they did an overnight (The first night) between Charleston and Jacksonville. Hid from a major gale (45 knot winds, 15 foot seas) just across from Jacksonville Naval Air Station. Then did two nights between Jacksonville and Fort Lauderdale arriving to Pier 66. While in route the final destination Marina changed from Cooley’s Landing in downtown Ft. Lauderdale to Royale Palm Yacht Basin which actually worked out much better for a live aboard community.

Snuggling in to a new slip the boat refit commenced. By the end of the year Sam and Sydney would spend over $50,000 refitting their new home Eoti. Two new top of the line electric heads, new refrigeration, upgraded fresh water system, a dinghy arch with buckets of solar on it, and the associated electronics to go with that. New radios, hoses, and various repairs all added to that huge total.

Simon and Stuart in June jumped directly from High School in Virginia to University in Tampa Florida at USF. Stuart spent time finishing his time at Virginia Air and Space program before summer University classes began. To start Simon and Stuart off on the right foot the family went to Disney World the few days before classes began and visited Epcot Center.

The visit to Epcot was Simon and Stuarts first time inside the park. A lot of the time when in Orlando we would do something like Downtown Disney. In 2019 if they have good grades at spring break we will likely do a family trip to one of the parks while Bike Week in Daytona is going on. It all depends on how good everybody is doing.

Things on the boat were not all great and happy all the time. One of the first emergencies we had on the boat was a fire. The shore power connection burned up and caught lots of little things on fire. A fire on a boat is a serious issue. As part of our refit we made it so this should never even be possible in the future. The repairs got us through the end of the year and the refit made the fix permanent.

Talking about not fun that ugly hairy foot is swollen to double normal size. The puncture wounds are of unknown origin and resulted in an infection that causes a lot of pain. Sam could not walk on the foot and was on crutches and a cane for weeks. Really good anti-biotics fixed the problem but nobody is really sure what exactly happened.

But, if you are going to have a swollen foot, be on some great drugs, and in general be feeling just about in pain as you can be… Travel internationally. Sam led a delegation of his team to Singapore where a bunch of other awesome members of his team live and work. The delegation from Weston included some really awesome people who had been with the company for quite awhile and a few brand new people. Sydney as a SOC manager got to go too and there was a lot of great work going on. Sydney on the way back picked up a cough that didn’t want to go away. We were kind of concerned and took her to see the ER doctor who gave her some cough and cold type medicine.

Meanwhile a trip to the Fall Annapolis Sail Boat Show was a requirement. The visit was well worth the time and effort and Sam and Sydney met several YouTube stars like folks from “Cruising Off Duty” and saw a bunch of others like “Rigging Doctor” and “Sailing Miss Lonestar”. This is going to be a yearly thing I think. Sam and Sydney are going to go back in the Spring next year for the Cruisers University depending on the curriculum.

Living on the boat is filled with some worry like weather and hurricanes. Things you can’t really change or do much about. Other times it is sitting on the deck drinking a glass of wine, and watching a super moon climb up over the marina lighting everything like day light. Living on the boat is a calming and life changing activity. Living on a boat while doing a major refit can be mind numbing and frustrating but some times life slaps you with a bunch of perspective.

Perspective is the lens of reality that focuses your attention on what really matters. We love our jobs. We love living on a boat. Going for an evening sail is an amazing thing. Perspective though is learning that Sydney has a form of cancer with a lymphoma the size of Sam’s fist lying dead center in her chest. November 28th Sydney woke up with chest pains, shortness of breath, and feeling weezey. A trip to the emergency room ended up with take Tylenol, call your doctor, and oh you have cancer. The month of December was lost in a flurry of appointments, fear, and general scrambling.

Without much information about the diagnosis there was a lot of soul searching on just what this means. 2019 is going to be a very high level of suckage for Sydney but she will get through it. Sam has told her she must get healthy as he is to lazy to find another soul mate, and all of their plans revolved around him dying first.

Simon and Stuart enjoyed their first semester of university but were caught off guard by the lack of guidance. It is substantially harder to tell when you are on track or off track and really easy to mistake failure for success. Sam and Sydney as long time college professors told them this, but all kids have to learns some harsh lessons on their own. Have they learned what focus looks like? Spring semester should show whether they are really ready for University.

We finished the year with a day sail. Hazel (the dog) was not sure about the leaning home thing. Simon and Stuart discovered that cranking winches is a work out. Sam has already started talking to Selden and a rigging company about getting three electric roller furlers installed so he can single hand the boat. Sam has docked and moved the boat by himself, has sailed the boat somewhat by himself, but the idea of moving that kind of sail plan without some assistance is a bit troubling. So electric furlers for the big sails will be the 2019 plan.

The end of the year leaves a lot of things up in the air.

What will happen with Sydney and her fight to stay alive and kick cancer?

Will Simon and Stuart figure out how to survive and thrive in university?

How sexy will Sydney look with no hair?

How much trouble will Sam get into for the weeks Sydney is inpatient and he is home alone?

When will Simon or Stuart actually get a girl friend?

These and other questions perplex the family in a general way. Sam is looking for a new gym. Since the family gave their huge home gym to a fire department in West Virginia and there was no room for it on the boat anyway. Sam has to find a gym that will let him work out. Managing stress is going to be a big part of his life in the first six months. Sydney wants to stay healthy and a Ketogenic diet is suggested for patients in chemotherapy. There is a company that actually prepares and delivers Keto meals. A Youtube and podcasting Keto diet author actually lives in our Marina. So finding information should be easy. The exercise level for Sydney will have to be moderated and she will spend the first six months of 2019 immuno-compromised.

So, that is about it for 2019. We’re planning on blogging and vlogging the rest of the refit and cancer treatment. Like always this blog is about our life and not any one specific kind of activity. Best of luck to everybody in 2019 and if you can’t have luck at least persevere.